chevon title decoration

Speakers



Adrian Burton (Keynote speaker)

Creative Director
Lambie-Nairn

Adrian’s role is to put his creative stamp on all the work done for all of Lambie-Nairn’s clients: from initial creative concepts, development, implementation to launch and beyond, adopting an on-going role to ensure the work our clients and their many agencies produce remains consistent, coherent and relevant.

He has over 20 years of experience in design, having worked at Sedley Place (UK and Berlin) where his clients included Volkswagen Group (VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda), Smart, and Arjo Wiggins, UDV, Seagram, and The Royal Mail.

A graduate from Leicester with a degree in design, Adrian never does things by halves and has demanding twin boys. Getting more demanding by the day!

Since moving to Lambie-Nairn in 1997 he has been at the helm of many high profile branding projects including the BBC (Masterbrand, TV, radio and events), ADTV, EA Games, FIFA, NMEC, Sainsbury’s, BT, Direct Gov, Expedia, Sunrise and O2.



Andrew Platt-Higgins (Conference chair)

Managing Director
Barkers

Andrew (also known as APH) has worked in the communications sector for more than 20 years, most of that time with Barkers. He studied English at university and spent six months as a trainee stockbroker, before joining the launch marketing team at London City Airport. In 1988, fearing that Docklands was an idea that would never work, he left for Farringdon Street and Barkers, just before the banks and newspapers decided to move in the opposite direction.

Over the next five or six years, he took on stints in copywriting, agency marketing and communications, research and studio management before leaving for a role at Aspen Business Communications in the mid-1990s. There, he worked alongside account planners for the first time and – having argued with them constantly – he re-joined Barkers two years later to build our own planning function.

For nearly ten years, APH headed a growing team of market research, insight and employer branding specialists, delivering solutions for clients across the industry spectrum, as well as writing and speaking on branding, recruitment and communications strategy, both within the UK and further afield. Andrew was appointed managing director of Barkers London in August 2008, nearly 20 years after first crossing the threshold – a powerful testimony to the Barkers employer brand.



Tom Abbott

Web Communications Manager
University of Warwick

Tom Abbott is the Warwick iCast project manager. Tom joined the University of Warwick in 2002 as online communications officer. In November 2005 Tom launched the Warwick podcasts programme which has developed into an extensive resource of audio content by university academics. He has also been involved in Research-TV, a project managed by the University of Warwick providing a video news release service for universities and other research organisations in the UK.

Tom has overseen the development of Warwick iCast and will be working with academics to identify stories for the service, as well as managing the promotion and distribution of content.



Richard Berry

Head of Creative Design
Leeds Metropolitan University

Richard studied art and design at Dartington College of Arts in the mid-80s. As a graduate he worked for Pindars, the printers, at the dawn of the DTP revolution as a project executive. And as a result he trained many of Pindar’s clients design teams, including: Penguin books, Hachette Magazines and IPC Magazines.

He then went to work for a top ten law firm, Nabarro Nathanson, as production manager, where he launched a new corporate identity, developed their website, and produced a CD-Rom 'brochure' and billboard campaigns that were firsts in professional services marketing.

In 1997 Richard joined Leeds Metropolitan University as production manager, later he was promoted to head of creative design and again launched a new corporate identity. He has been responsible for brand development for the University for the past six years.

Richard has an MA in Graphic Arts & Design, is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has the Professional Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing.



Chris Chapleo

Senior Lecturer in Marketing
University of Portsmouth

Chris Chapleo is a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Portsmouth. As a former HE marketing practitioner he has a particular research interest in university branding, and has written and presented widely on the subject since moving to academia. He is still involved in ongoing branding consultancy projects and agency work in the sector, building on previous account director experience and client side roles in the publishing and leisure sectors.



Richard Clark

Account Planner
Barkers Education

Formerly an award-winning copywriter, Richard joined Barkers in 2004 to focus on branding and audience insight. As a specialist in employer branding, Richard works closely with HR, marketing and leadership teams to diagnose organisations' employer reputation objectives and challenges. Through research, he and the wider Barkers team then develop appropriate propositions, channels and architecture to activate new employer brand strategies. Clients have included: The Coca-Cola Company (Europe), Microsoft, Crown Prosecution Service, Maritime & Coastguard Agency and Halfords.



Philip Dodd

Director
Made in China UK

Philip Dodd is an internationally recognised expert in the field of culture and creative industries, he is regularly invited to speak and advise on the creative industries, from Chaoyang District Government, Beijing, to Sapporo City Government, Japan, to the UK and appears frequently in the international media from the Financial Times to BBC World Service. He has helped the UK government develop its cultural and creative industries strategy and is credited with helping to develop the government’s ‘Cool Britannia’ strategy.

In 2000, while director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, he founded the globally recognised Cultural Entrepreneurs Club: a support agency for over 500 of London’s creative industries. He has taught widely in the university sector, holding visiting professorships at King's College London and the University of the Arts; helped to found the London Consortium PhD programme and has been centrally involved in developing postgraduate education around the creative economy. He was recently named “one of the top 50 UK design gurus” by Design Week magazine and one of the “top five creative entrepreneurs” by Elle Deco.

Philip Dodd has travelled and worked very regularly in China since 1998, when he was invited to accompany Prime Minister Tony Blair on his first visit to China. Since then he has established many networks in China and is a recognised authority on China by the UK’s creative and cultural industry community. He is the European consultant to the Li Ka Shing Foundation.

He is an award-winning broadcaster and editor, and currently represents a weekly programme for the BBC. In 2004, he was described by The Guardian as “one of two of the cleverest analysts of the political-cultural changes of his generation”.



Chris Dry

Head of Communications
UCAS

Chris Dry has worked in education communications for nearly 20 years.

Initially working in publishing, he later transferred to a communications role in institutions working for nine years at City University in London.

For the past three years, he has worked at UCAS as head of communications, within the policy and communications department. He leads a team of 19 staff, with expertise including marketing, media relations, PR, website development, publications and design.



Ashar Ehsan

Director of Marketing and Communications
University of Wolverhampton

Ashar Ehsan has a marketing career spanning 15 years. Predominately in FE/HE sector (NESCOT, Cass Business School, and the University of Bradford), he spent four years (2000-04) in the private sector at Oxford Instruments plc, and online marketing consultant at Fujitsu Siemens (Munich).

He has direct experience of marketing and communications management (brand identity, marketing campaigns, market research, internal communications, market research, stakeholder and PR management etc).

He has a Masters in marketing and his thesis was on ‘Integrated marketing communications – a concept and framework in higher education institutions’. He is starting his PhD in September 2009, which will focus on: ‘Brand management vs organisational strategy in further and higher education – the development of a working concept and framework for marketers in education.’



Phillip Lane

Head of Planning
Barkers Education

In his nine years at Barkers, Phill has researched and planned recruitment strategies for clients ranging from investment banks to children’s charities. As a planner and MRS-qualified researcher, he is experienced in desk research, focus group design and moderation.

Most recently much of Phill’s expertise has been focused on the graduate marketplace. Successful projects and campaigns have included an annual programme of Europe-wide market research for BP, the implementation of Accenture's award winning ‘It Makes You Think’ campaign and on-campus ‘Ecycling’ CSR initiative, together with the development and design of brand new graduate schemes for Barratt Homes, the Crown Prosecution Service and Cancer Research UK. A regular keynote speaker on the graduate circuit, Phill is responsible for industry-standard research in the National Graduate Media Audit and End of Term Report. Current work includes the development of pod scrolls and consulting on a range of new media channels.



Maria Llinares

Education UK Brand and Communications Manager
British Council

Maria Llinares joined the British Council four years ago as education UK brand and communications manager, where she is responsible for the management of the Education UK brand, working with around 80 countries worldwide. Prior to joining the British Council, Maria marketed long haul holidays as worldwide brand manager for Cresta Holidays. A graduate from Manchester Metropolitan University, she started her career in newspaper marketing, working for the North Wales Newspapers group.



Luke Mckend

Industry Head - Local/Careers
Google UK

Luke Mckend is industry head classifieds markets at Google UK. In this capacity he works with some of Google's largest clients, helping them develop their online marketing strategies. He has specific responsibility for managing clients in recruitment, social networking/dating, restaurants and has recently been working with a selection of Google's education clients.

Luke has worked in the online industry since arriving from South Africa in 1998, gaining experience across a wide variety of areas. He first worked for TMP Worldwide, initially in their candidate management unit, and eventually consulting with larger clients assessing their readiness to adopt enterprise e-recruitment systems. He joined e-recruitment innovators i-Grasp in 2003 as commercial director, and more recently worked for Stepstone after i-Grasp was acquired in 2005.



Jeff Marshall

Head of Education Research
Barkers

Jeff is ideally suited to head the education research team, having had considerable directly relevant experience in the sector, as well as of managing research projects for about 60 colleges and universities.

Previously an assistant principal at a large London college, Jeff taught in further and higher education for some time. He has first and master’s degrees from the University of London; is a member of both the Market Research Society and the Academy of Marketing; and is the author of various reports and papers on education and training issues.

Jeff’s particular interest – and the focus of much of his work at Barkers – is how institutions distinguish themselves in a very full and complicated market place. Recent work has included market research on branding and curriculum development at the proposed University of the Highlands and Islands, a positioning exercise for Birmingham City University and the merger that produced Kirklees College, plus its subsequent branding and launch.



Robert Mighall

Senior Brand Consultant
Radley Yeldar

Robert is a senior brand consultant at Radley Yeldar, specialising in higher education branding. He has been involved in most of the major re-branding projects in the sector over the last five years, including The University of Manchester (when it merged with UMIST), TVU (when it merged with Reading College), and the formation of the University of Bedfordshire.

Robert is a former academic, having been a fellow in English at Merton College, Oxford, and the former editor of the Penguin Classics series. He comments regularly on branding issues in the trade press.



Ian Morgan

Head of Development - Education
Barkers

A graduate of the University of Leeds, Ian worked in business planning roles for three of the ‘big four’ UK banks before joining the world of recruitment communications in 1997. Since then he has supported a wide-range of clients, from Coors Brewers and Arriva in the private sector to large, complex public sector organisations such as Kirklees MBC and Birmingham City Council, before discovering an interest in working with HE clients and becoming account director for Barkers' education clients in the north of England. He has worked on staff and student recruitment projects with a number of universities including Birmingham, Coventry, Hull, Leeds, Sheffield Hallam, Worcester, and York.

Combining that HE experience with an interest in digital media, Ian and his Barkers colleague Jon Davies were invited in 2007 to address the UCAS European marketing conference in Amsterdam and Marketing Network FE marketing conference at Warwick on the development of digital techniques in student recruitment.



Josh Smith

Head of Inside Sales
Facebook UK

Josh has a strong recruitment background, working for 10 years at The Guardian Newspaper on the recruitment team – finishing as national online manager with responsibility for guardianjobs.co.uk. During this time the site became one of the biggest jobsites in the UK, with a large number of direct clients, recruitment agencies and consultancies using it as well as regularly hitting over a million monthly users.

He joined Facebook in June 2008 to set up the UK’s inside sales team. This team looks after both recruitment and display agencies in the UK. One of his first jobs was to look at how Facebook could be used as an effective recruitment platform - working with a number of advertisers to get actual insights into what works best. Using these insights, the team has now brought on many new recruitment agencies, consultancies and clients.

Josh will talk today, using Facebook as the example, about how social networking sites can be used to target exactly the audience you need with recruitment messages directly relevant to your audience and the results this can generate.



Martyn Spence

Head of Marketing, Recruitment and Communication Service
University of Cumbria

Martyn Spence is head of marketing, recruitment and communication at the new University of Cumbria. He led the development of the marketing and communication strategy for the university and the successful development and launch of the Cumbria brand into HE and FE markets.

A member of the university management team, Martyn is responsible for developing and delivering university strategy for marketing, communication and student recruitment. He leads a service with 53 staff working from campuses across Cumbria and in Lancaster and has overall responsibility for brand and reputation management, market research, advertising, student supplier relations, student enquiries and admissions, web/on-line development and alumni relations.

Martyn has worked in educational marketing and recruitment for the last 12 years in both further and higher education, building successful and award winning teams at all three of his last institutions. Previous achievements have included many individual and team awards and nominations from organisations including THES, Heist, the Marketing Network and CiB North. A chartered marketer, Martyn has an MA (marketing) from the University of Lincoln and holds several other marketing and management qualifications. He is an active member of a number of professional management, HE and marketing bodies and sits on the organising committee of the CIM HE members interest group.



Professor Laurie Taylor

Broadcaster and Times Higher Education Columnist

Laurie Taylor is visiting professor in the department of politics and sociology at Birkbeck College, University of London. He was recently made a Fellow of Birkbeck College and also holds visiting professorships at the University of the Arts and University of Westminster. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Central England, Leicester, and Nottingham. His contributions to social science were recognised in 2003 by his election to the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences. His contribution to business development was recognised last year by his appointment as an ambassador for Investors in People.

Before entering academic life, he had eight years industrial and sales experience, worked as a librarian in Liverpool, taught in a London comprehensive school, and was a professional actor with Joan Littlewood's famous Theatre Workshop Company at Stratford East. He is the author of 14 books on motivation, change, communication, and personal identity, and is a regular contributor to the New Statesman, The Independent, and The Times. His weekly satirical column on university life has been appearing in THE (Times Higher Education) for the last 20 years. His most recent book (written with his son, Matthew) was called What Are Children For?

For the past 25 years he has been heard on BBC Radio 4 in such programmes as Stop the Week, The Radio Programme, News Quiz, Speaking as an Expert, Afternoon Shift, and Room for Improvement. He can currently be heard every Wednesday afternoon on R4 presenting Thinking Allowed, a programme devoted to society and social change. He has made several major television documentaries on such topics as crime, drinking behaviour, and the purpose of education. His last major film (broadcast in December 2003) was a Channel 4 documentary on the meaning of celebrity. He is currently working on a documentary for C4 concerned with the inadequacies of palliative care in the UK.

In the last 12 years he has addressed over 500 major national and international companies on such topics as change, motivation, teamwork, new technology, risk, and communication. He is now engaged in a speaking tour of British universities called 'Articulated Laurie'.

© Discovering Futures 2009-2010Terms and ConditionsWeb Development by kuroi